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www,seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 37 merit, website, technical paper, and presentation to judges) "We placed 8th at the last competition because we were overambitious with our technical goals. There's a dichoto- my between building a good vehicle for the competition and building a technically good AUV. The way the com- petition is designed encourages vehicles specifically designed for the competition but may not be very useful outside of it. It's a reality that we're forced to accept and as a result, we're being more conservative this year with our list of features. Our biggest focus is going to be on reliability. We've been testing early and often to identify before the competition," explained Ian Wang, Cornell's team leader.

The 2006 vehicle retains the twin hull design that

CUAUV has become associated with. The upper hull houses electronics, while the lower hull houses batteries and motor controllers. An aluminum frame holds togeth- er the two hulls and provides mounting points for four thrusters and sensors. Two thrusters are mounted on each side for turning and moving forwards and backwards. Two other thrusters are at the front and back of the vehicle and control depth and pitch. Sensors are mounted downwards and forwards at the front of the vehicle.

When asked who their nemesis is in the competition,

Wang stated that "the competition atmosphere is very friendly and we're on great terms with a lot of the teams, especially ETS (Ecole de Technology Superior) from

Quebec. There's a lot of mutual respect between the teams because we understand what everyone is going through so you'll see teams hang out and share tools and advice at the competition. Historically, our team and MIT have had a few close finishes, alternating first and second. So if any- thing, it would be MIT."

Ian will graduate next fall with a B.S. in Electrical and

Computer Engineering. He feels that his career plans are wide open but he definitely wants to continue working with robotics.

There are three principle missions outlined for the con- testants to accomplish in this summer's competition. --

Machine Vision Processing. In this area the vehicle must identify visual markers and coloration, locate specific bea- cons and shapes; and follow underwater pipelines. • Acoustic Sensing using Doppler based navigation to navigate to an underwater acoustic beacon. Waypoint Navigation for onboard decision mak- ing and vehicle navigation based on complex sensor inputs as well as advanced control techniques for autonomous docking.

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Visit www.maritimeequipment.com/mt & Click No. 207 2006 Cornell University AUV Design Team (Photo Credit: Cornell AUV Team)

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